Yeah, the kind of person who ends up with that job is going to have their life changed way more by being the guy who got to yell at the secretary of "war" than by getting a promotion.

Hopefully in a good way. In a just world that guy never pays for drinks again.

Having something to listen to is key for me. It gives a racing ADHD mind something to focus on so that I kinda fall asleep without noticing.

I have a cheap random brand of sleep mask that has built in bluetooth headphones, and it is great.

I don't think that is a gotcha once you consider the full context.

Voting blue is not an assertion that the Democrats are good.

The problem is that our culture is so rotten and voting system so broken that the other viable choice is nazi dictatorship on top of being even MORE capitalist and corrupt and destructive.

In many cases they have blown past "the customer will like it" all the way to "our data suggests that 90% of customers will not leave and profits will slightly increase as a result."

I mean, at this point enshittification is a widespread business plan.

The biggest difference with updates isn't even being forced vs "when I say so," even though it does matter.

The biggest difference for me is the whole "be good at the thing you were made to do" aspect of Linux and FOSS. I never have any hesitation to update my computer, because updates are fast and unobtrusive. At work I will run an update check in a terminal in the middle of a Teams meeting while I also have code building in the background using 100% CPU. No issues.

I absolutely love Linux Mint. But then once I tried regular old Debian with KDE Plasma, I knew that was home.

It sounds that way written down, but I suspect that the predictable easy access to the airport without large but unknown delays waiting for you really helps to ease the friction of each step and the anxiety leading up to them.

To make a stretch of an analogy, it kind of reminds me of my work situation. A few years ago I got a job with a new company that has the perfect location. It's not just in my town but on my side of town. The drive is short and fun, like 6-7 minutes with most of that on a country road with turns and hills.

There's no worry about getting back and forth, going home for lunch, running in on a WFH day to test on some hardware, leaving at the wrong time and getting stuck in traffic, etc.

I get the feel that the vibe with this airport on the island is similar.

The most boring yet most common type of conspiracy: Nobody planned this situation, but now that it exists and somebody is making money from it, we are going to drag our feet "fixing" the "problem."

I just hope this decisive result is in part because the republicans and Trump are SO bad that they have driven people to wake the fuck up and choose a more noble worldview.

I just hope it's something other than fuel prices. I really hope that this result would be vaguely similar if the Iran war never happened. Having hope in people again would feel neat.

I can already hear my internalized Lemmy voice pointing out that we don't win anything by choosing the friendly capitalists over the asshole capitalists, and that all the theater over corruption and bigotry are to distract from the only real war: the class war.

But I think you countered that best by saying it's only a start.

Even if we assume that the US government will look like the best Europe has to offer within a few decades, it will take multiple steps to get there.

And you know what is definitely NOT a step in that direction? Giving the entire government to the fascist racist pedo bigot robber-baron party. We did that TWO years ago.

It looks like the transfer rate of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway is back on the menu, boys!

Your accurate yet unavoidably incomplete list made me reflect on how much the term "pro-life" is inaccurate while also being propaganda spin bullshit. It is literally the term for a policy of the death cult wing of american politics. I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but god damn.

I am a nature lover and animal lover. I come from a conservative redneck-ish family and one very strong correlation throughout my life has been that the more conservative somebody is, the more likely they are to openly brag about how much they would NOT spend money to help their own pets. Or even about how they would shoot them (usually a dog) if they ever did X.

But that is part of a much larger package deal where those people define themselves by the things they hate and activities they avoid.